Action Painting!

While I suppose it's possible that someone reading this blog might think I have a pulsating, gigantic brain stuffed to bursting with pop and rock Facts, most of you probably realise that I do a wee bit of research for each post - not simply to supplement what I already know about each band, but also to check that what I think I know is actually true.  Although given that my research usually starts (and sometimes ends) at Wikipedia, I may be stretching the definitions of the words 'facts' and 'true'.

Action Painting! are the first challenge to my casual approach to research, as they're the first band in my collection not to have a Wikipedia entry.  How will I manage?

What I knew already was this - I have the one song, called These Things Happen and although I have it as part of a mixtape (OK, mix CD, but mixtape is a much nicer term), it comes from a compilation album called One Two Twee: An Indiepop Retrospective.  This is it here:

Weirdly, every time I've listened to this song (and I'm immensely proud to say that I'm currently one of Action Painting!'s top listeners on Last.fm) I start off thinking I don't like it, but by the end I think it's rather good.  In all honesty, it is a bit inept - the playing's not very good, the singing's like Robert Smith on a bad day, the mixing is terrible - but about half way through, it's suddenly really, really good and then it abruptly ends when you're not expecting it to.  That'll do me.

These are the other things I've learned about Action Painting! today:

• These Things Happen dates from 1990, is their first single, and is the 28th of 99 singles released by indier-than-thou Sarah Records;
• They're from Brighton, England;
• Apparently, at least some of the band were part of the backing band for risible riot-grrrrl-lite duo Shampoo in the mid-90s (I can't find any confirmation of this, but it's a good story!).

And that's about it.  If anyone knows any more, please let me know.  Especially the Shampoo bit.